A Tribute To Shawn Smith - One of the Great Vocalists of My Generation
I still don’t know how this slipped by me but I found out Shawn Smith had passed away earlier this year several months after it happened. I don’t know if that has happened before - where we lost one of my musical heroes and I was totally unaware - and it hit me pretty hard. It speaks to how under appreciated he was, and I think if you ask the average person or even the average casual music fan if they’ve heard of Shawn Smith you’ll get way more who haven’t than have. I have to do more to change that.
By Sachyn Mital - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19840900
For me it goes back to 1993 when I was living on my own and out of state for the first time in Dayton, Ohio for my first job out of college. Still finding myself at 22. I worked in an office on Colonel Glenn Highway right up the road from Wright Patterson Air Force base and also right up the road from one of the locations of CD Connection. That was a dangerous place for a CD store for me - right on the way home from work with no one to get home to. Plenty of time to be anonymous in a smallish but relatively cool city I had no previous connection to. I spent many hours in that store (there was another location a mile or so from my apartment in Centerville too) and that’s the store where I discovered The Smashing Pumpkins - the Pumpkins owned me that year like few other bands have. But at the end of April an album came out that was a “side project” of Stone Gossard’s from Pearl Jam called “Brad”. That was the name of the band. At that time I would have bought anything that had anything to do with Pearl Jam after that debut masterpiece and that hasn’t really changed 9 more albums and over a quarter century later.
Meanwhile the first Brad album Shame had a huge impact on me - I was blown away by the soulful vocals and the kinda-grunge but kinda-R&B vibe of the whole thing and that album has become so closely associated with my brief time in Dayton that it can transport me back to 1993 like no other recording. From those first two notes of “Buttercup” and Shawn Smith singing “It’s just a matter of tiiiii-immmme” - until what? For me I still didn’t know… I was kinda in the wilderness. But somehow Shawn Smith’s songs made me feel like whatever it was he’d be there to help me get through it. And that voice!!! So soulful - not like many I’ve ever heard. I knew this was going to be a long term relationship - I became a fan fast. I won’t drive through Dayton without listening to that album to this day, and I’m right back to 1993 and in touch with my 22-23 year old self. I’ve got fond memories of that place even if it wasn’t so glamorous like living in Chicago or New York.
I continued to follow Shawn’s career and subsequent Brad albums as well as Satchel albums (Satchel was basically Brad without Stone Gossard and still sounded like Brad albums). Shawn’s music continued to generate strong connections to different times in my life. Oddly enough still with The Pumpkins in a parallel way at times. As strong as Shame connects me to Dayton, so do the first two Pumpkins albums. And as strong as the first Satchel album EDC connects me to my nighttime drives home from working on my M.B.A. at Wayne State University in Detroit, so does Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness released three months later. The song “Suffering” which is the EDC closer is one of the most beautiful songs you’ll EVER hear.
Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising was the response that helped many process and mourn 9/11 which I get. And I do love that album. But the third Brad album Welcome To Discovery Park was also released less than a year after that horrible day, and it was not meant as a whole to address 9/11. Yet there is a line in the second song “Shinin’” that when I heard it in Atlanta…..
***Side note, I was in Atlanta for two non-consecutive weeks of training when I worked very briefly and very miserably for Sprint. I drove down and back both times because this was during a time when I was unable to fly from anxiety - not related to 9/11. Welcome To Discovery Park, Songs For the Deaf by Queens Of The Stone Age and Emancipation by Prince (not sure why since it was 6 years old already - just happened, and Prince was a huge influence on Shawn) are my Atlanta albums but I digress…
Like I was saying, there is a line in “Shinin’” that says:
“Living free is the way to be.
Living free is our destiny.
Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”
Hearing Shawn sing that helped reassure me what the way forward was in a post-9/11 world. More than any anthemic Bruce Springsteen singalong could. Heck probably more than the president could. I connected to Shawn. Shawn was only 5 years older than me. He was my generation. He understood.
I never saw him live which is a great regret of mine. It just never worked out. One time Brad was touring and made a stop here in Detroit on the night of a friend’s wedding for example. But I did have one interaction with him. I emailed him once to tell him how much I appreciated him, and he emailed me back. Just a very cool, gracious exchange. Exactly how I suspected it would be. I’m thankful I got a chance to tell him. He’s gone too soon, and I will be forever grateful for the impact he has had on my life. Rest in peace Shawn. I’ll do my part to make sure the world remembers you with a renewed sense of purpose. It’s the least I can do for you, your family and your legacy!
Here’s a Spotify Playlist of some of my favorites by Shawn… and there’s plenty more of his music available at his bandcamp site.
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com.
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